2023-12-12T18:48:21+00:00

Deadlifts & Public Speaking

December 12, 2023/The Bridge Faith Community/Leave a comment

My favorite physical activity is a deadlift, and yes, I have given speeches and spoken on a stage. (These are my answers to the last 2 days of site prompts)

When asked, people are more afraid of public speaking than death. This seems strange at first, but I lost my house and everything in it in a flood in 2011. Many of us did. Others had inches or feet in their basements and first floors. The ones who lost everything put all of our ruined things on the front yard for dump trucks to pick up and haul away, and the house was bulldozed a year later. We didn’t have to deal with too much of the physical clean-up. The psychological, emotional and spiritual clean-up was a different story. Home can (and should) represent safety and security, and that was drowned with the carpets and doorknobs. You can buy a new end table, no stores sell peace. And watching your possessions scooped up onto industrial equipment as garbage is not a picture that quickly fades.

Anyway, the others with less water had to hire restoration companies, mold remediators, they had to replace their things, carefully watch weather reports… Yes, of course, no one’s house goes underwater, except ours did, and it certainly doesn’t twice, but try to sleep with statistical improbability when you’ve woken up to impossibility. In lots of ways, they had to deal with the catastrophic disaster in a much more present manner. Like public speaking. If you are terrible, you have to look at those faces again and again, they may remember and feel embarrassment for years.

Dying, like our experience, is walking away into a new blank space. We remember where we came from and what happened to our home, who knows if dying is like that? But we won’t have to look into the audience’s eyes and watch them struggle for comforting words. It’s why you don’t write a poem for your special lady and read it to her. You hand it to her on your way out the door after dinner and a goodnight kiss.

Love poems and death aren’t exactly the same, but the analogy holds up, I think. The vulnerability can feel like dying, and that’s what we’re afraid of, probably. Opening ourselves up to another, waiting in agony to see if we will be accepted or rejected. Will they like our speech and it’s content? Or will they like us, our personality, our way?

I quite like it now. Not everyone likes me, not everyone has to. That’s a new development, that I don’t have to be everyone’s favorite song. Some don’t like me at all. An old man left before the closing prayer like his hair was on fire after one Sunday sermon. I have some sharp edges and disagreeable positions, but that’s also why I might someday be somebody’s favorite song. Nobody cares too much about white bread, it’s nobody’s favorite, nobody’s worst. It just is fine. Like McDonald’s. It’s fine, kind of gross, but not gross enough to really matter.

Walking is fine. Bicep curls and lateral raises are good enough, but nobody hates them, so nobody loves them, either. Deadlifts and squats, on the other hand… Mention Leg Day to your gym buddies and you will hear one of 2 responses. “I LOVE Leg Day,” or “I HATE Leg Day.” You either wake up early or look for any excuse to miss.

My brother can’t stand the sound of Morrissey’s voice. Nobody hates Coldplay. We all say we do, but that’s just for show. Coldplay is white bread. We don’t send sandwiches back because they’re on white bread, we don’t turn the radio station when “Yellow” comes on.

I don’t know what the point is. Maybe that we could be deadlifts and public speaking, if that’s what we are, instead of Coldplay and Applebee’s, manufactured to be sterile, inoffensive, and reach the widest audience. We can be exactly who we are, flaws, faults and rough spots, and many will love you just like that. Of course, many will not, and some people will even tell you that they don’t and why.

Perhaps the point IS absolutely to be deadlifts and public speaking, to open our hearts and souls and show vulnerability as whole, realized human beings, because to pretend to be anything else is just too much work. And lots of work in a meaningless pursuit is just plain silly. We have other things to do.

2 Songs For Thanksgiving

November 21, 2023/The Bridge Faith Community/Leave a comment

Bruno Mars, in “When I Was Your Man,” breaks all of our hearts with: “I should have bought you flowers. And held your hand. Should have gave you all my hours. When I had the chance. Take you to every party ’cause all you wanted to do was dance. Now my baby’s dancing. But she’s dancing with another man.”

We all know this feeling, but maybe it’s not because she’s dancing with another man. Maybe it’s because she’s gone. Maybe it’s because she can’t dance anymore. But the feeling of, “if I only knew,” is real, and universal. We all understand “should have,” right? I should have held your hand one more time, when I had the chance.

The opposite is illustrated in Thomas Rhett, in his song, “Notice,” who sings: “At that party last night. Baby, I don’t know why. I forgot to mention. You were looking drop-dead. Not even a contest. Center of attention. If I had to say every time you looked amazing. You’d think I was joking. But I brag about you. When I’m not around you. You don’t even know it.. You think that I don’t notice. How you brush your hair out of your green eyes. The way you blush when you drink red wine. The way you smile when you try to bend the truth. You think that I don’t notice. All the songs you sing underneath your breath. You still tear up at a beach sunset. And you dance just like you’re the only one in the room. You think that I don’t notice, but I do.”

I have lots and lots of faults, too many for me to count (or to list), but one thing that cannot be said is that I do not notice. The Angel played this song for me, and the truth is that it’s not something I like too much. But I do like that she does. I love how she sits when we look at her phone while it plays, how her mouth moves to the lyrics. She knows I notice, and that’s why she curled up into my arms to listen to it with me.

I didn’t always (and, if we’re honest, I probably don’t always.) There were so many old, dead relationships where I was way more Bruno Mars than Thomas Rhett. The thing about the Mars song is that it isn’t to send us down a spiral of regret and self-loathing. Instead, it is a string around our finger, a reminder that nothing is to be missed. Both of these songs are sisters of Genesis 28:16, where Jacob laments, “Surely the Lord was in this place and I was unaware.”

Thursday is Thanksgiving, and this reminder is an invitation into a new reality that begins any time we say it does. But it is Thanksgiving, and it’s a very good time to say it does.

Of course, we should have held her hand one more time, but we can’t do anything about that now. Guilt doesn’t give us that one more dance, and neither does regret. We honor those moments we chose something else besides bringing flowers or giving our hours in a different way: by choosing to not miss the hands and hours that are here now. These gifts are precious and sweet.

There will be turkey or tofurkey, filling and apple pie (which my mom, for some reason, is now calling apple gazette), and people who are absolutely the very best and can be absolutely the very worst. When I talk about my sister, you will know she has always been my hero, and she has often been my nemesis, and my heart aches thinking about how much free time I haven’t spent with her. But what I will do is soak in Thursday on her couch with my mom (who is now calling apple pie apple gazette, and so will we), brother, nephews and my favorite dog ever, I will thoroughly enjoy every second.

The Rhett song has a line, “Baby, I don’t know why. I forgot to mention. You were looking drop-dead.” The conviction we feel is to not forget to mention ever again.

Look into their eyes. Hold their hands to pray, to say thanks. Say thanks for them and for the God who created us all and gave us to each other to make these days so full of wonder and light. Kiss too deeply, hug too long, laugh too loud, and eat as much apple gazette as you can, get sick on joy and love. It’s Thanksgiving!

To Skip Or Not To Skip

November 15, 2023November 15, 2023/The Bridge Faith Community/Leave a comment

Today’s site prompt is, “What part of your routine do you always try to skip if you can?” and that fits pretty well with what I was thinking about right now.

First of all, what does “if you can” mean? It is my routine, I decided it was important, and made it a practice. Now, if this means work, in general, or specific tasks at work, I misunderstand the assignment. I could skip them, but it probably also means I am skipping employment, and that seems like a different question. But if it’s my routine, I can skip it if I want. No one is making me live the way I do, I am mostly free to do or not do.

The right answer to the prompt is Leg Day. I lift weights, separating days into Push (chest, shoulders, triceps), Pull (back, biceps), and Legs. This morning was Leg Day, and now my legs, back, buns, feet and toes hurt, my neck and head are heavy and tired. I know tonight I’ll have to go to bed, and that means I might have to crawl up the stairs. Maybe I’ll sleep on the couch down here. Sleeping next to the Angel is wonderful, but my legs.

My routine is made up of items like feeding the many pets in this house, working out, showering, eating breakfast, brushing my teeth, reading the Bible, lunch, dishes, writing, picking my boy up from school, and lots of other things I don’t remember now. But the number of things or even what they are aren’t the point. The point is that I created this routine.

We decide what’s important, what we value, and then we (hopefully) implement them. We brush our teeth because clean teeth matters to us. We eat breakfast, or we don’t, because we’ve given assigned a heavy weight to either one. None of them are necessarily convenient, but they are the blocks we use to intentionally build our lives.

I sat in my chair this morning with precisely this situation in my lap. Of course, I didn’t want to. I know what Leg Day is, and I no longer love it like I did even a few years ago. But I wouldn’t skip it, any more than I’d skip getting dressed. I am a man who lifts legs. I like that I am that man, it means something, it says things about me. It says I’m consistent, reliable, that I do hard things. Legs aren’t really the point, those characteristics are, and legs are how I remind me of them, and the man I want to be. I’m not always reliable, don’t always do the hard things, but getting up early on Wednesdays to lift legs without choosing the easy excuses moves me further along the path towards who I will be.

I can skip Leg Day, but why would I compromise on future me. We too often settle. I too often settle. And I guess I think part of reclaiming our worth as human beings is not settling for the crumbs that fall from the plate on the way to the trash, when we belong at the table.

I could be consistent most of the time, when it fits the schedule or the company. I could do hard things, unless it’s too hard. And I can do leg day, except for those days I don’t feel like it. But I’ve settled for a very long time. I am already well aware of the boy “when I feel like it” makes. I can’t wait to see what happens, to find out who I become, if I stop settling for so much less.

Last Night

July 18, 2023/The Bridge Faith Community/Leave a comment

With this blank screen in front of me, I know what I want to say, I just don’t know how to say it. Or even if I should, Our words should be used to build, and that is usually what I try to do in this space, but sometimes the point is in our bad behavior, hidden in our our most regrettable moments. And writing anything is about honesty, especially in a non-fiction blog situation. If we feel like the writer is curating an image, what on earth is the point? Anybody can wear a mask and lie. The only way to find connection is through a mutual authenticity, and sometimes that is ugly on the outside.

Last night the baseball season ended. The first day, I sat the boys down and said something like, teenage boys are awful a lot of the time. But that’s only because they usually deal in Lord of the Flies type social dynamics. They’re mean, sarcastic, cutting. They mock and tease, try to shrink others to make themselves appear taller. This is ridiculous and rooted, as everyone knows, in fear and a raging insecurity. They wear masks to try to hide the overwhelming inadequacy in their hearts.

Of course, this is not just teenage boys. It’s just as much women at your office or men at the grocery store. We act out of our perceived lack, and that makes us nasty and awfully dangerous.

So I tell them we will not do that here, we will operate from a different reality. You don’t have to be insecure here, you don’t have to be afraid. We’ll stand up straight, support and love each other. And that’s largely what happened. Errors and mistakes were easily forgotten, lots and lots of encouragement was poured out like water, and we won everything there was to win.

A side note: It’s not often enough that the best people are the best performers. The kindest, gentlest, most caring people don’t always win. When they do, as was the case this season, it must be acknowledged and savored. As written in the masterpiece Horton Hatches The Egg, “and it should be, it should be, it should be like that!”

Last night was the league celebration, where they got the trophies they had earned through hard work and commitment – to themselves, their gifts, the game, and each other. The second place team in the year end tournament was also there to collect theirs, as well.

Then the coach was invited to give the medals to the players, and he (clad in sunglasses and a skull t-shirt instead of a team/sponsor/uniform shirt), wearing an uninterested disguise, walked to the front, using foul language and disrespect as weapons.

Another side note: I don’t mind foul language, not much is offensive to me, but there is a time and a place. A youth sports event, in front of the league administration, players and parents, is not the place (whether they’ve all ‘heard it before’ or not.)

He handed his medals to the players without regard for them and their work. Then as we got ours, he made a derisive comment and they all refused to acknowledge any of us, as we collected tournament and league championships, and our players received their all-tournament & MVP awards.

It was so so sad. It might have been something, anything else if the behavior wasn’t so hollow and obvious. I wanted to cry and give him a hug.

My question was, why? Why would anyone want to discount or diminish an achievement, any achievement, of another? But I already know. The desperate quest for proving your worth, and the accompanying terror of not knowing if you’ll ever find it, is very powerful and has crushed far more than just him.

I don’t know if my team made the connection. When we were alone, I reiterated the importance of living free of the inadequacy/insecurity that weighs down so many of our moments – I wonder if they recognized that they were given a perfect illustration of the result of a lifetime under the boot of unworthiness, like the ghost of Christmas future.

As for the boys I coached, I told them they were beautiful, that I was so proud of them (championship or not), and that they were loved. I told them every minute we spent together was an honor for which I could never adequately express. Then we said goodbye for the last time this season.

As for that guy, I wish he hadn’t embarrassed himself so thoroughly. But more, I wish and pray that he finds some sort of peace in who he is and feels the familiar arms of a loving God around him, whispering in his ear that he is, and has always been, loved.

And as for me, (to again borrow from Horton and his egg), they sent me home happy, one hundred percent.

Baby Steps

June 20, 2023/The Bridge Faith Community/Leave a comment

There is this Japanese concept called Kaizen, where small, nearly imperceptible, steps stack up and we find that we are miles from where we began. Usually, we decide we need to change something (exercise, food, any pattern/habit you can think of) and jump into the deep end. Our diet is bad, we feel like garbage, so we cut out carbs, sugar, soda, AND dairy. We are healthy and awesome, for 15 minutes, and then we binge on all of the things we recently excised. We’re stuck on the couch, maybe we’ve never worked out before, so we commit to going to the gym, deciding to lift heavy weights every day for 3 hours/day. We are strong and believe our shirts are much tighter around the arms, we are fit and ripped. Until the morning of day 3, when we’re in so much pain we can’t put pants on or brush our teeth, and that’s the end of that.

Kaizen laughs at this “strategy” – we’ll call this method Foolish. In the diet example, if every day we are eating an entire package of Oreos, today we eat that package minus one. We can do that easily enough, so we do. We throw the extra one away. Then tomorrow, we eat the package minus 2. And so on. But the time we even consider going a day without Oreos, we’ve already had 30ish successes and are feeling quite good about our chances.

In the Foolish paradigm, we fail, fall off wagons, and end up worse than when we started (mostly because we have yet another false start and the automatic negative voices in our heads have more evidence of our lack of will power.) We totally bought the lies of no pain, no gain. If it’s not, at least, uncomfortable (searing pain is much much better) it’s not worth doing.

But Kaizen takes time. Sometimes lots and lots of time. We barely notice just how far we’ve come, but we are completely transformed. The pounds stay off, the gym is a lifestyle, we read, learn, grow, our relationships are stronger, we are more flexible and consistent, we are new.

In a culture whose religion is instant gratification, Kaizen doesn’t play well. We don’t want to deadlift the bar for a month to fine tune our form, we’d rather load it up until our spines bend and crack and we break. We don’t want to lose 1 pound this week when we can lose 10 with snake oil supplements and the latest trend in thermogenic diarrheal cleansing. We don’t want Meditation for Beginners, 1-5 minutes a try for a thousand tries before we level up to 6-10 minutes, we’d rather lock ourselves in a closet for an excruciating hour once.

We’ve exchanged patience for boredom. Small, consistent growth is boooooring. Small, consistent growth is also awesome and lasting.

[Of course, some things require drastic immediate change to save your life. Kaizen is not the best choice for heroin addiction or alcoholism. There is no weaning off an extramarital affair. Some things must be amputated now, with a swift motion. We are not talking about those things.]

If our marriage is lukewarm and we are drifting apart, losing our connection, maybe a monthlong intensive 1-on-1 immersive experience is counterproductive and will magnify our small annoyances and increase the space between us. Instead, let’s turn our phones off and have dinner tonight, just tonight. Then again next week (or even next month), then maybe twice. Maybe we start to look forward to it, maybe we begin to remember why we got together in the first place. Or if we’ve lost physical touch and intimacy, committing to a weekend sexfest might not be the best path. Maybe if we hold hands in the car on the way to pick the kids up, or a quick kiss on the cheek goodbye, would be more effective to tearing down those walls.

The walls won’t come down today or tomorrow or next months, but the relatively comfortable baby steps continue, steady and slow, until those walls are down and we’re heading out to that sexfest with our special people 35 pounds lighter with thick arms and a robust meditation practice, not missing the Oreos even a little.

Eyes To See

March 22, 2023/The Bridge Faith Community/Leave a comment

I go to a local store for something called creamed pearl tapioca pudding on Tuesdays. Every Tuesday. And then I drop it off with the Angel at her office, along with a fountain soda as thanks. What I tell her is that it needs to be refrigerated and I’m unable to access our fridge. I don’t need to take it to her. I take it all through the winter, when my car is colder than any available appliance, mostly so I can see her for those 30 seconds.

Yesterday was Tuesday, and while I was there, I was overwhelmed, speechless and in awe of this woman. I sent her a text from the parking lot that read, “No kidding, I can not believe I get to be married to you. You are a KNOCKOUT,” and then I added 2 emoji faces with hearts for eyes. We’ll only talk about how she looks today, but as you probably already know, the beauty on the outside isn’t close to how lovely she is on the inside. She’s pretty far out of my league, but that’s her problem, not mine.

The point is that sometimes we can be so familiar with something that we take it for granted, easily and often. I live with this Angel, see her everyday, in pajamas and in heels, I know she’s gorgeous. I know her smile in my sleep, the way her eyes shine, how her laugh sounds, her skin feels. I know all of this, but there are surely lots of moments where I don’t truly appreciate all of this.

And there are so many things just like her (well, not just like her), but equally overlooked, or dismissed as common when they are anything but.

Pizza, Lord of the Rings, vinyl, this blanket, Catfish, creamed pearl tapioca. There are things we couldn’t wait to get, absolutely had to have, and changed our lives, that we don’t even give a second thought today. I’m not sure we need a change of scenery nearly as much as we need to open our eyes to the current scenery, because at some point that new scenery is going to be the current scenery we are looking to change.

I haven’t listened to The Queen Is Dead in months, and the last time I did, I skipped some tracks. It’s a perfect album, and I treat it so cavalierly that I skip tracks. We eat in front of the tv or in the car, concentrating and appreciating nothing. We see sunrises and sunsets everyday more perfect than the finest art. The Angel is so stunning she could stop clocks.

How and when did we get so distracted and jaded that we miss all of this splendor? Somewhere we were sold the lie that there was anything in this fantastic world that is “ordinary.” Ordinary is for the blind and imagination-less. In the Bible, scales fall from the apostle Paul’s eyes and he can finally see things as they are, see reality as it is. Maybe our scales need to fall, as well. I don’t really want to take anything for granted anymore, and I certainly don’t want to take people for granted ever again. I don’t want to become so familiar with laying like spoons with the Angel that it loses it’s tender warmth and simply becomes something we do. It IS something we do, but it’s not simple at all, it’s also significant and perfect.

I wonder how many other things in our everyday lives are significant and perfect, if we only had eyes to see, ears to hear, and hearts to feel them.

Senior Night

January 31, 2023/The Bridge Faith Community/1 Comment

Tonight is Senior Night for the basketball team. There are 3 games left, and this is the last home game. Maybe there will be playoffs, but I don’t have anywhere close to the intellectual capacity to figure that out – the districts, sections, and classes have never made any sense to me. I imagine someone will tell me if we have more games.

This team is much much better than previous years. There was a toxic class to pass through the school and their influence will take time to dissipate, so this year was the first in rebuilding an entire culture and, playoffs or not, has been an almost total success in that. “Learning to win” is a tired sports cliche and the reason it’s tired is because it’s so often true. These boys are beginning to learn to win. Tonight, that isn’t an issue, they will probably not have to worry about winning. But the great thing about sports is that you never know. In the 1988 World Series, the Los Angeles Dodgers beat an unbeatable Oakland A’s team in 5 games. It was impossible, yet it happened. So maybe… but the result hardly matters.

Tonight is the first senior night for my oldest son (there will be another one for baseball in the spring.) We’ll walk him out to the middle of the court and smile and barely keep it together. Or we won’t and the Angel and I will cry like babies. Either way, we will be there, fully present, with each other and with all of the emotions surging in our hearts and souls.

I’m remembering the night I learned he was no longer an idea. The Angel took a test on the phone with me, of course I couldn’t wait to get home, and she gave me the news. I was on 422 coming through Lebanon and pulled over in front of the community college and wept, equal parts terror and elation. Well, not exactly equal parts. We had prayed for him and now he actually existed, it was more celebration and gratitude. But there was certainly terror, swirled in like the cream cheese filling in a pumpkin roll. What kind of daddy would I be? Was I ready? What kind of boy would he be? And a hundred million more questions.

If you’ve met him, you know how amazing he is. If you haven’t, I’m sorry, you really should.

We often refer to a 2 hands theology, and a 2 hands life. Nothing is usually just 1 thing, it’s a combination, more like a hurricane, of different, sometimes wildly conflicting emotions. Tonight, I’ll be proud of my boy, happy for the boy he’s been and the man he’s becoming and grateful that I got to watch and know him so well. I’ll also be heartbroken, crushed that he’ll not nap on my chest again, and frustrated that each day couldn’t have been forever. What a 2 hand anything requires is honesty. We show up as we are, feel what we feel, no hiding, no images. We don’t miss a thing. We don’t wake up and say “God was in this place and I was unaware.” We show up.

I think back to all of the moments that brought us here. I didn’t want to go to Lebanon Valley College, but somehow I found myself there, a business major in 2 classes with the Angel, who had a boyfriend for nearly all 4 years. She happened to drop him right on time. I happened to be in the computer lab one evening, and she happened to be there, too. I happened to talk to her, even though she was faaaaar out of my league. I happened to be on a plan that took more than 4 years – the last semester, which I shouldn’t have had, was when we met and went on our first date. We happened to go on that date, happened to get married, and happened to make this person who will have his senior night tonight.

I say “happened to” and “make” with the same posture. It all seems so orchestrated, almost as if there was a wonderfully loving God making paths, moving feet and softening so many hearts, which of course, He was. We didn’t make Samuel alone, couldn’t have ever made Samuel without the Creator of the Universe making him first.

So now, I want to tell you my answer, with 18 years of hindsight, to the question if I was a good daddy. Maybe. What I do know is that I was intentional. Everything I did (even the mistakes I made) I did on purpose. When he sits down with a therapist to complain about me, what he’ll say is that I hugged, kissed, and told him I loved him too much and too often. And I can live with that.

There are other places where I’ve written to him (beginning with that positive test on his first night), much more detail I could, and will, dive into, but those are only for him and I. Here, tonight is senior night and I will do the 2 things I have done every day of his life; I will be there, authentically, embarrassingly me, present and engaged, and more than that, more than anything else, I will love him.

A Christmas Life

December 27, 2022/The Bridge Faith Community/Leave a comment

I am the pastor of a small church in town. You might not know this because this space (lovewithacapitall.com) has been a separate room where I can talk about Morrissey (mostly) and other art and artists I like. At least as separate as I can be. The things we discuss here, we also discuss there – After all, I do write it, and the best, most authentic art comes from the most authentic parts of us. If I were to pretend I didn’t love Morrissey songs and Fight Club and superheroes, that would be to abandon certain important, meaningful parts of me. How can we connect on any sort of deep level while one of us is hiding or holding parts of him/her-self back and pretending to be something else,something we think the other wants us to be? Dishonesty and image making drive me insane. So, there (in the church virtual room), these cultural touchpoints relate explicitly to God and the complicated journey of faith. Here, not necessarily as explicitly, but they do relate.

Anyway, this particular faith community began in my living room, when the church to which I belonged closed its doors. That means I speak every Sunday, and each talk should probably contain one point the people who give their most valuable possession, their time, can use, just in case they don’t hear anything else. It’s shocking, but the truth is that not everyone present is hanging on each word I say. Gasp! On Saturday night, Christmas Eve, this ‘takeaway’ was that we don’t only celebrate Christmas once a year, but that we live Christmas lives.

What does that mean? What does a Christmas life look like? Maybe I should’ve given a bit more thought to that, it sounded like a pretty good phrase at the time, and maybe I did an adequate job at conveying the idea. Often times, we are having conversations in our heads & hearts, and very little has to be said to affect us in profound ways. For instance, let’s say you were feeling that you wanted to learn to play the guitar, then a character in the book you’re reading is a guitar player, then you’re listening to Howard Stern and he’s interviewing Slash, and then you come to a church service and I happen to be talking about Abraham and Campbell’s Heroes’ Journey and say, “Maybe you’re thinking of taking a new step…” And that’s all it takes. I don’t have to be eloquent or clear at all, it’s enough and your spirit and what I call God will do the rest.

I know a Christmas life doesn’t mean we spend money like wild animals buying things we don’t need and don’t really want in the first place, things we have to return or exchange. It doesn’t mean we buy landscaping and put it inside (though I guess it could mean that for you). It doesn’t mean we gain weight as if we’re preparing to hibernate for months (like I do). It doesn’t mean we make habits of superficial small talk with distant relatives (unless we actually care for them and the talk gets bigger and less superficial.)

It’s always easier to define what we are not, or who we don’t want to be, or what we don’t want to do, than it is to say Yes. But negative postures don’t change our lives. Wanting to not become my dad never got me closer to who I wanted to become, to who Chad was once the block of stone had been chipped away. What would it reveal? I wouldn’t be a groundhog or 10 million other things, but what would I be underneath it all? That’s the coolest thing about opening your eyes, what you’ll see.

So, here’s what I came up with. A Christmas life is one of imagination. It takes a very open mind that dreams to consider a story of a God coming as a baby to a 13 year old girl in a barn, and what it could all mean. It takes imagination to hope for something new, for a fresh word. A Christmas life hopes. We hope for more than we see, that I can be more, that you can be more, that it isn’t what it is, that we’re not simply what we’ve always been, that we can change our world. A Christmas life is relational. We ask, listen, think the best, hold each other, kiss, put our phones down and pay attention to the fantastic blessings in front of us. We have more friends than “friends.” Mostly a Christmas life loves. We love our people, our animals, our neighborhoods, our country, our planet. But we do not love these things at the expense of other neighborhoods, countries, or planets. We love those, too. We are awake and aware, looking for people to love and ways to love them that they understand and receive. A Christmas life does not miss sacred moments, and a Christmas life realizes that they are all sacred moments if we are intentionally present.

I wonder if all of that came across in my message. Who knows? I wonder if all of that comes across in my life. I think, to that thought, what a Christmas life would say is, “if it didn’t yesterday, it sure will today.”

(One more thing. You know, I know almost nothing about promotion or reaching more eyes for this blog. And what I do know, I shy away from, for several reasons. But it’s going to be a new year. Promotion doesn’t have to be to feed my ego and/or brag about numbers, it could totally be about connection and circles that overlap.So, I would love to know you’re there, so maybe we could dream together and talk about what A Christmas Life means to you, and maybe we could do what we can to usher in a new world. Just a thought.)

Into Darkness

December 11, 2022December 12, 2022/The Bridge Faith Community/Leave a comment

I have the COVID. It’s nothing serious, just a cold, really. Though I’m feeling better, my chest remains tight and probably will for the next few days & weeks. I’m violating my own HIPAA rights to tell you this because the week on the couch has allowed me to watch too much tv, and you know, tv for me usually means documentaries, and the way I feel about these docs ends up in words here.

I watched some of Sons of Sam: A Descent Into Darkness, on Netflix, about a serial killer (or serial killers) in New York in the ‘70’s and beyond. David Berkowitz is widely regarded as the only “Son of Sam,” but there’s evidence to suggest that there are many more, centered around a satanic cult and a church called The Process. It’s super creepy and disturbing and I do not recommend it at all.

I said it was about serial killings, but it’s not entirely. It’s more about a guy named Maury Terry, a journalist who got wrapped up and dragged underwater by this case and obsessively chasing unexplored leads to the truth. Did he find that truth? Who knows? I guess he’s probably right, (that it was more than 1 person), but at what cost? You could probably count his life as another one taken by the Son(s) of Sam.

I also said I watched “some” of it. I used to be someone who, once I started something (book, album, movie, etc) would have to finish it. I no longer feel that way. When the doc turned down the dark paths of the occult, animal sacrifice, and snuff films, I skipped episodes 2 & 3, and watched the last.

If you eat nothing but Oreos, you will feel heavy, lethargic, and sick. In much the same way, the media we listen to and watch will affect our soul and spirit. This is good and bad. If we listen to positive messages, we begin to feel hopeful and optimistic. If we watch documentaries on the Son of Sam, we start to feel like there are bugs crawling under our skin and we can see the world outside through darkened lenses. This guy, Maury Terry, devoted his entire life to this quest, and I couldn’t take 4 hours before I needed to cleanse my mind.

Of course, we say it has no effect, but that’s like saying marketing and advertising have no effect. Those ridiculous beliefs come from a place of dangerous arrogance and lead to the McDonald’s drive-through eating McRib sandwiches without ever wondering why. The why is because what goes in matters. If pornography is something I enjoy, isn’t it likely the way I see sex and women will reflect those images? How about if I make a point to follow the “upworthy” Instagram page, a sort of a news site for beautiful things, might that change how I see the people around me?

What do we listen to? Watch? What do we eat? All of these things matter. Will we descend into darkness or keep our heads up in the clouds? This decision isn’t a magical way to avoid pain or sadness or depression or anything. Those things happen, they’re an integral part of life, we can’t wish them away. But we do get to choose how to interpret them. We get to pick the lenses through which we see the world.

We can skip 2 episodes or we can read the article and skip it all. We can turn it off and go outside. What feeds us? What inspires us? Maybe we could do more of those things. Maybe this kind of documentary does inspire some of us. The point is that we are intentional about it, that we are awake to the energy swirling around, and inside, of us and that we begin to pay attention to just how much of a say we actually get. And maybe, just for today, we spend a little less time descending and a few minutes more looking up?

Stone Etchings

October 28, 2022/The Bridge Faith Community/Leave a comment

I’ve been thinking lately. The world around us has been crazy. I recognize that election cycles bring this sort of angry division to the forefront, but it certainly isn’t solely in and political discourse and nasty advertisements. It’s on Facebook and highways and in grocery stores and schools, Tuesday afternoons and Sunday mornings. Nowhere is exempt from this rage-filled polarization, seeping into the culture and transforming it into it’s own image.

Or is it?

Of course I see the mean posts, condescending looks, the (physical, emotional, spiritual) violence. How could I miss them? But they remain exceptions. I mostly find people to be kind, gracious, smart, funny, and generous.

Once I read that negative experiences print on our souls immediately, positive experiences take much longer to make an impact. This is why you can get 900 hearts or thumbs up and forget them, and 1 mean face emoji and wonder why for the rest of the day, week, year. That 1 mean face seems to weigh significantly more than 900 hearts.

Is that why the 1 person that cut us off on the road today stings in our brain while the rest of the relatively capable, conscientious drivers (99.99%) are unnoticed? Or the umpire’s 1 bad call trumps the 200 good ones?

I am not saying that the bad calls or dangerous risky drivers are unimportant. I’m not saying hateful posts are not problematic, or that the horrible incidents of violence should be ignored. They are symptoms of a broken world, of which we are all a part. We act out of our insecurities and fear just the same as the people that lead the news, and they all must be studied and addressed, all must be given their proper, loving attention.

What I think I am saying is that those heartbreaking incidents don’t have to steal our hope or drive us into despair. That person’s cutting remark isn’t proof that people are all awful. True, that person might be (or they might not be, they might be overwhelmed or tired or depressed or anything), but it isn’t a judgment on everyone.

My idea is that we probably get what we’re looking for. If we’re looking for fantastic songs, we’ll find them. Or smiles or empathy or help or respect or love. People hold doors open, let you go first, say hi, and are willing to spot your bench press.

The songs that suck are still there (Coldplay’s will, sadly, always exist;) but they don’t have to occupy as much of us and color as much of our outlook as we usually let them. Some marriages will still end in divorce, but lots and lots of marriages are inspiring and fulfilling. Some days it rains and the weather forecasters are shockingly wrong, and those errors stick out in our minds, but they are right waaaay more often, probably 352 days of the year.

It’s not that the good moments don’t print, it’s just that they take longer. The key is to give them that time. When someone says your shoes are nice, maybe we don’t shrug it off or tell them they’re wrong (like we so regularly do), maybe we just say “thanks,” and take a breath and appreciate our shoes and the person with the compliment with whom we should spend more time. Or look at the heart reaction on the picture of your dinner, think about the person who sent it, and count to 15. Or 100. However long it takes. Take the time to feel the softness of the skin on someone’s hand when you hold it, or the sweetness of their lips in a kiss. We all know there’s no one to vote for, but we get to vote – do we ever take the time to acknowledge how extraordinary that is?

It’s the difference between entitlement and gratitude, I suppose, and we won’t always get on the right side of that divide, but usually all it takes is some attention to the beautiful things to regain perspective. To look up and around. My son is going to have a high school “Senior Night” at the football game tonight, and if you listen carefully, wherever you are, you might hear my heart break. But I will be there, fully present. I have been there, truly been there, every day of his life so far, and I have thoroughly enjoyed those days. And yes, it’s sad that he’s not my baby boy anymore, but he’s not my baby boy anymore and that is no small gift. I will hold this moment tonight with 2 hands, I’ll cry and I’ll laugh, mourn and celebrate, and give it all the time it needs to etch into me in stone.

Love With A Capital L

A journey towards living an inspired life of love in the modern world

Tag: presence